Large organizations, such as corporations and governmental entities, often are comprised of many users and user groups. These users and user groups may be spread over large physical spaces, or geographic areas, such as in different buildings in the same city, different cities in the same country or region, and even in different countries. Moreover, such users and user groups may also be separated by subject matter, such as different departments in the same or different facilities.
Practicing messaging governance over such dispersed user groups can be difficult. Many considerations contribute to a comprehensive communications policy, including risk management, compliance with organizational norms, human resources considerations, security issues, regulatory issues, operational policies, and best practices guidelines, to name a few. Moreover, each geographically distinct and/or subject matter distinct group typically operates its own messaging server separate from the other groups. Moreover, each distinct group may be governed by different a communication policy, which is typically stored on the respective messaging server of the group. Thus, each user group often follows a different communication policy, without knowledge of the communication policy of other groups within the organization. Each messaging server relies upon its own store of communication rules, while other groups are responsible for the maintenance and application of their own rules.
Such communication policies may be developed on a group-by-group basis, whereby a communication decision-maker (e.g., a corporate security officer) for each group must communicate the policies of the group to a systems professional of the group for implementation over the messaging of the group members. This communication process is time-consuming and can cause difficulties as the systems professional must transform the rules and policies of the communication decision-maker into tangible, executable rules suitable for execution by the messaging server.
These conventional systems are effective at enforcing communication policies within a user group of the organization, but are often redundant, wasteful of resources, and may be contradictory. A way to successfully implement a common communication policy over several related user groups belonging to the same organization, while providing individual communication decision-makers from each group of the organization some control of the communication policies of their group would be useful.